 What is a clutter corner and do you need one? Do you need one and do you have one? Okay, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question and I get to help you find an answer. Now on this show many times you've seen me standing behind a table and then we go through things like socks and shoes and you say Angela, that's very strange. Why are we not inside your closet? All right, so here's the concept of the clutter corner. I'm going to teach it to you and then on this show, I'm going to show you how it works. We're going to be bringing in boxes one by one from storage units, from attics, from bedrooms, from closets and we're going to be going through them one by one. Here's the reason why. If we can isolate the items in our house, we can remove the attachments that surround it. For example, if I have a box of books and they're sitting on a mahogany bookshelf next to grandmother's old chair, when I go in to look at those books, instead of just looking at the books as in, do I want to keep these books and are they serving a purpose in my home? What happens is I start getting emotionally attached to the chair and grandmother's lamp and the little knickknacks that we hung on after grandma passed, right? So everything that is in that space creates this kind of, I don't know, atmospheric mood that maybe is not the best place for us to make decisions about the contents of the items that no longer serve a purpose. So I've done this with my clients for years. I'm now going to teach you how to do it so that you can do it in your own home. So what we're going to do is we're going to find a space. This is just a little tiny corner of the house. It's not a great big space, but it's isolated from everything else. There's nothing else in this corner except a card table. It's a plastic table. So any table will do. Now my suggestion is that you put it down low enough that if you put your arms out, just like this to the side of you, that you have a little bit of space where you could put a box. Here's the reason why. If I put a box on this table, then I can see what's inside the box. So it's high enough that I can see what's inside, but I can sort through the stuff in the box and I can make decisions about what's in the box. So we're going to go through our lives box by box. I know it's really exciting, right? Here's the reason why. There are things in our homes that do not spark joy, but they serve a utility purpose. For example, I have dinner plates in my kitchen cupboard. They do not spark joy, but I like having them in my house because I don't like eating off the floor. Okay? So there are things that we're going to have in our house that don't spark joy that we're going to keep. And then there are things that are inside our homes that while they might be fun and they might serve a purpose at a particular time, we're going to make rules about those things, okay? What this means is no longer will you just be getting rid of stuff to be getting rid of it. You're going to get rid of it, but you're going to make a rule about that thing. For example, how do we feel about VHS tapes? Now, some of us still have them in our homes, but how do we feel about them? And if we make a hard fast rule about we're going to stream that information now, no longer are we going to be using VHS tapes than when we go to a garage sale or a yard sale or a thrift store or if somebody gives us a box of things. If we open it up and there are VHS tapes inside, we will now have a rule that we no longer have VHS tapes in our lives, right? We're going to make a rule about those items. And once we have a rule, it's going to start informing all of our future decisions as it changes our relationship with stuff. I know I can hear you guys super excited that we're on this journey together, right? But the reality is this. If we do not make rules about the things and the items in our homes and our lives, they're going to get out of control and we'll keep rebuying them or we will keep letting people give them to us or we will keep letting them enter our homes without knowing why. And then it becomes clutter and then it becomes junk. And then it starts taking over our world as like the spider thread that we talked about on another episode where it consumes energy and emotions that we didn't plan on, right? So we want to take control of the stuff in our lives because we are in control of our lives. And so by creating a cluttered corner, we can bring stuff into this isolated area and we can make decisions on it and make rules about how we feel about that stuff. And as we let it go from our lives, it blesses our lives as we give it to someone else, right? And then no longer will we have stuff enter our lives with no rules attached. All right, so your assignment for today, go in your house and find a corner and we're going to make you a cluttered corner. And that's what we're going to call it is the cluttered corner. There's nothing in the corner. We're going to put a table, an end table, a card table, a plastic table. It doesn't matter just something that you can bring one box at a time. And we're going to go through our lives one box at a time. We're going to compartmentalize the stuff in our lives. Here's the other reason why we do this. If I was to go inside your closet or your cupboard or your drawers or your dressers or underneath your bathroom sink or any of those places, if we go to those places, what happens is we start doing lots of stuff and we create piles and then it becomes overwhelming and chaotic. If we're dealing with just one box in an empty corner, it's easier to make compartmentalized decisions. So I need you to create a cluttered corner. And unless you're a minimalist and you've got nothing in your house, this is going to serve you very well. But this is a series that I've done with clients for years. It's incredibly effective because it helps you eliminate all of the distractions as you focus and laser in on that one thing, figure out how you feel about it, and then make a rule for today and for the future. Thank you so much for joining me here today in my clutter corner and I'm super excited to help you create your own clutter corner. We're together in the notes below. We will work through all of the different things that you have, different items, different boxes of stuff, and we'll create new rules together to help you change your relationship with stuff. Now, there's one more thing that I want to mention. We have a group called Hoarding World. You do not have to be a hoarder to participate, but it's a great place to upload before and after pictures to meet a lot of really cool people that are working through relationships with their stuff. And it's a great way to find support and encouragement as you go on this journey. So come join us. I will leave links in the show notes. And until then, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.